Microsoft’s replacement for its age-old web browser Internet Explorer dubbed ‘Project Spartan’ has been released to beta testers in a new preview build of the Redmond’s upcoming Windows 10 operating system.
“Today, we’re excited to announce that Project Spartan is available for the first time for Windows Insiders to try out as part of the latest Windows 10 Technical Preview build for PCs,” said Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president of the Operating Systems Group at Microsoft, announcing the preview on Monday.
Although Spartan is still not feature-complete, its first preview does include most of the features and functionality that were showed off earlier this year during an early demo of the web browser.
“It’s important to note we’ll have more features and many improvements coming to Project Spartan before we make it broadly available. This preview is NOT a polished, ready-for-everyone release. For Windows Insiders, we’re excited to make Project Spartan available for your feedback, only a short time after we made it available for use internally at Microsoft,” the company adds in the blogpost.
Some of the browser’s features include Microsoft’s personal assistant Cortana, OneDrive integration, support for stylii including the ability to create and share custom annotations on Web pages, a user-friendly reader mode and the new Spartan rendering engine called Edge.
Cortana in Spartan will be available in the US versions of this build, however, it will roll out globally by the final release. It also comes with new inking and sharing capabilities.
Project Spartan will enable users to write or type directly on the page, comment or even clip content and the share it as a ‘Web Note’ via mail, or a social network.
Microsoft’s upcoming OS ‘Windows 10’ is expected to be released late in the third quarter or early in the fourth quarter of 2015. The new operating system will be available as a free upgrade to Windows 7 and 8 users.
